“Well, you know what? She’s still acting like she don’t know you, so that doesn’t count. I want my money.” She reaches her hand out in front of me and wiggles her fingers.
“We can do this in the car. It’ll be weird if I just hand you a thousand dollars right here.”
“You got a thousand dollars in your pocket right now?”
“In my wallet, little girl. Yes, I have a thousand dollars in my wallet.”
“Why?” she asks, scrunching up her face.
I shrug. “Why not?”
“’Cause you could get robbed.”
“Have you seen me? Who’s going to rob me?”
She taps her thumb and pointer finger together. “You got a point, you got a point. Your axolotl looks weird, by the way.”
“All axolotls look weird,” I say, frowning at her.
“You got a bad attitude.”
“Me?” I say, raising my eyebrows. “I have a bad attitude?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s ’cause old girl broke your heart, and now you can’t focus. I hope you get it together before the season starts.”
I put my hand on my heart. “God damn, Zea. All you got is daggers. Shit.”
A little girl next to me looks at me with huge eyes.
“I’m sorry, my bad. I’m sorry,” I say to the girl and her mother, then again to the girl.
I turn to Zea. She is cackling and shaking her head at me. “You are such a rookie.”
After the class ends, I work up my nerve to go talk to Lily. At least to say a proper hello and just see how she’s doing.
I leave my sister to scroll on her phone because she’s a teenager, and she’s never bored as long as she has that thing.
There are six little girls holding paintings of axolotls, displaying various levels of skill, but most of them are a mess. Lily is kneeling down, making eye contact with every child and complimenting each and every one of them for their artistic endeavors.
Damn.
I stand there through three kids, and it starts to feel weird.
She doesn’t even look up at me.
I look at her one more time and then pull myself away, back to my sister.
“You ready to go?” I ask her.
“You chickened out,” she says.
“No, she’s busy. I don’t feel like standing in line after a bunch of six-year-olds to talk to her. I have her number.”
“Then why haven’t you called her in all this time? How long ago were y’all together anyway?”
“More than a year. Can we go?”
“Yeah, yeah. You hold my painting,” she says, handing me her really, really nicely done axolotl.
